Saw someone today my own age with a very nice Vauxhall Astra, 1.7 and the 'CDTi' badge on the rear. Thought.. wonder if this is also a Fiat unit like the Corsa's 1.3. As far as I can tell, it is.

Just how many Vauxhalls use Fiat engines?!

Amazes me how people with their cars laugh at Fiat and half of them probably don't realise it's at the heart of their beloved bland-mobiles!

1.7 Cdti is pretty much the only none multijet based current Vauxhall diesel engine that.

Though speaking of bland mobiles every current fiat with the exception of the 500 and Panda is based on a modified corsa chassis so I wouldn't be too quick to judge..

According to Wikipedia, the platform was designed by Fiat and Opel, the 2 companies working together to develop it.

Either way....they share a lot more than an engine.

I think GM were intending to buy Fiat, but in the end, the deal fell through.

With regards to the platform, I really don't understand why people get so funny about the fact that Fiat and Opel worked together to design it. Having owned both a 'pure' Fiat and a platform shared 1, I don't see any dilution of the Fiat character tbh.

Don't get me wrong, I like Vauxhalls. But they are quite bland in my opinion.

My parents both have Astra's and when I move / drive them every so often I'm charmed by how a 1.6 petrol and a large, smoother car feels!!! If only they were as cheap as my Panda to run and fix, then maybe I'd consider one! They are nice though.

And they're just as German as any VW too when you think about the fact Germany's Opel design team pretty much designs them.

Some Vauxhalls are actually really nice cars, but yes, some of them are a little bland. My parents have a late model mk2 Corsa, and it's a nice enough car, but whilst it isn't as hatefully dull and boring like a Polo or Fiesta, it has nowhere near the stylistic flair of their old mk2 Clio or the mk3 Clio they replaced it with, let alone their old mk2 Punto ELX or my Grande Punto!

The 1.3 multijet diesel has been used in a few cars over the last 12 years through a period where manufacturers did not want to develop there own small diesel units.

Vauxhall partnered with fiat to access small Diesel engines, as their own (including the 1.7) where getting old and uneconomical by modern standards. Fiat we're going through a very difficult patch and facing bankruptcy and hoped GM would buy up the fiat brand but with the economic crash GM were not able to buy fiat out and instead had to pay a big fine to get out of the contract.

In the mean time most 1.9 Diesel engines used on GM cars where derived from fiat. Many of which did not use the multijet technology and their own ECUs

SAAB completely redeveloped the top end and the Vauxhall units were generally more powerful.

Yes fiat can build the technology but it takes others to make the most of it.

SB1500 said:

And they're just as German as any VW too when you think about the fact Germany's Opel design team pretty much designs them.

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VW Group is where it is today all thanks to an Italian guy who had been in charge of AUDI since 2002 and the whole of VW GROUP since 2007. Maria de silva prior to this used to work for fiat and Alfa Romeo.....

So 'typically german' is in fact very Italian. (He only recently left)

BMW head of design is Canadian, Mercedes has a German head of design at the Moment but historically they too have taken a lot of influence from Italian design houses and designers.

Oh and the head of design for GM Europe is still an American, it being an American company

We've been looking at new Astra's and Mokka's to replace the missus DS3 next year and although she likes them i just get a feeling of 'Meh' standing in a vauxhall showroom.

The Viva is ok, but apart from that, the last Vauxhalls I actively liked were the Corsa mk3 and the Astra mk5.

puntofan01 said:

The Viva is ok, but apart from that, the last Vauxhalls I actively liked were the Corsa mk3 and the Astra mk5.

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Seriously?

Of all the current range you like the one that's the bastard child of a Suzuki Alto and a Hyundai I20 (well technically it's a rebadged Korean Chevrolet..).

Ah well each to their own, I do agree with Gavv8s initial point thoughts with the dullness of what's on offer. Although the market is such in small family cars, and mini soft readers that very few are actually particularly interesting as apparently all everyone wants in this area is low low monthly payments and the ability to stop itself so you can text and drive round town safely..

There is some interesting technology in the Astra, on star and some other things but not enough to get me interested in the whole car.

City cars and superminis are what interest me most tbh, but if I had to have a small family car, no doubt about it, I'd definitely have a Tipo. With regards to soft roaders, I don't care for them at all, whatever size category they fall into.

puntofan01 said:

City cars and superminis are what interest me most tbh, but if I had to have a small family car, no doubt about it, I'd definitely have a Tipo. With regards to soft roaders, I don't care for them at all, whatever size category they fall into.

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But still the Viva is the 3rd best city car made by Vauxhall..

? ? ? ?

puntofan01 said:

? ? ? ?

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Vauxhall make the Corsa, and the Adam which are small/city cars?

I'd forgotten about the adam, lol! The Corsa is slightly bigger than the Viva and Adam, so I'd class that as a supermini rather than a city car.

I like Vauxhall but nothing seems to beat Fiat in my mind. Despite the fact every other option is much better value for money.

My local dealer reckons the 1.2 FIRE ain't going anywhere yet since diesels are under so much fire and he admitted himself about the technical problems with the TwinAirs etc (though he tried to say it's normal and not an issue after)
puntofan01 Didn't you say a while ago you wanted the FIRE to stay too?

I don't have a problem with the FIRE engines, I'm on my 2nd FIRE powered car, and would more than happily buy a 3rd when the time comes.

Back to the original post. But first, a bit of history. (FF members are now logging off in their droves and going to bed.

Having had the original Viva, complete with 1256 cc of pulsating power all 58.5bhp of it......trust me, in that car the .5bhp was important, a Chevette, again still with the same engine and a Chevette HS2300 with a significantly breathed on engine I've had more than a few Vauxhalls.

I was always a fan of the slant-4 engines and, in my opinion, they were sadly underdeveloped by the factory. Blydenstein Engineering (the de facto factory competitions arm of Vauxhall) enlarged the 2300 out to 2.6 litres and produced some (for the time) considerable power and torque improvements.

However, it was in 1979 when I went to work for an Opel dealer in Manchester that I got the new Opel Kadett as a company car. This was a revelation in as much as it was FWD and its engine was a real fizzer that just begged to be revved and in some respects was redolent of the Alfasud engine.

At 1.3 litres it put out 75 bhp and, although that might elicit shouts of "Big deal" you have to put that in context by remembering the Chevettes 58.5bhp and similar outputs from Ford, Chrysler and BL. To get 75 horses in the Vauxhall/Opel range you had to go to the Cavalier/Ascona 1600 and to get that power in an Escort you had to go to the Mexico.

That motor was what became known as the "Family 1" engine, later 1600 1800 and 2000 versions were Family 2". After a while the 1.6 came from the "Family 1" block as well. But what also crept in almost unannounced was a 1.6 diesel which outwardly was very similar to the petrol engine; it was a belt driven SOHC motor.

That engine is, I believe, what the current 1.7 derv drinker is derived from. At the time when FIAT and GM were having talks, they had the 1.6/1.7, a 2 litre and a 2.2 diesel, and from memory they weren't held in particularly high regard. Someone I still work with had a Vectra with the 2 litre and it would struggle to better 42mpg and was a pretty coarse unit. FIAT had a pretty up to date diesel range but some of their petrol engines were looking a bit dated.

There was the FIRE, obviously, but the rest were probably getting a bit long in the tooth, the Alfa V6 was introduced in 1979, the V6 that appeared in the Lancia Thema was the Peugeot-Renault-Volvo unit that (I'm willing to be corrected here) powered the Peugeot 604, Renault 30 and Volvo 960 as well as......possibly......the DeLorean. The 2-litre four cylinders were descended from the Aurelio Lampredi designed engines which themselves started life in 1966.

So Vauxhall had some badly thought of and old diesels and FIAT had the same problems with some petrol motors, and I think it's safe to say they were thinking about development costs so maybe they became a perfect fit. From a political point of view, I don't think there was any way that Ford would collaborate with their mortal enemy and perhaps the same was true of VW.

The last Alfa V6 was actually a Holden derived engine with some considerable modifications carried out in Milan and the 2.2 inline-4 used in the 159 and 166 was from GM (Europe).

The 1.3 MJ seems to have been made exclusively in Poland and by FIAT in India, as I believe is the 1.6 MJ, whereas the 1.9 MJ was made in both Italy and Germany. The 2 litre GM and FIAT versions were developed separately after the two companies broke ranks.

Just out of interest, well it interested me anyway, Common Rail injection as a mechanical principle dates from around the time of the First World War as Vickers used the idea in their submarines around 1916 and some trucks used it in the late '80s - early '90s, but it was probably FIAT that first brought out the electronically controlled system that we know now, before selling it to Bosch who developed it.

So the answer to your question is perhaps not that simple, beacause as is the way with these things, the two partners will have made modifications to the own version of an engine, but, I'd say that all of them are, or were in their original forms FIAT diesels, with the exception of the 1.7 which dates back to the Isuzu 1.5 and 1.6 engines in the Cavalier, Astra and Corsa.

This started out as a brief note as to which engines came from Italy and instead it turned into a ramble.

StevenRB45 said:

Seriously?

Of all the current range you like the one that's the bastard child of a Suzuki Alto and a Hyundai I20 (well technically it's a rebadged Korean Chevrolet..).

Ah well each to their own, I do agree with Gavv8s initial point thoughts with the dullness of what's on offer. Although the market is such in small family cars, and mini soft readers that very few are actually particularly interesting as apparently all everyone wants in this area is low low monthly payments and the ability to stop itself so you can text and drive round town safely..

There is some interesting technology in the Astra, on star and some other things but not enough to get me interested in the whole car.

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Agree about the Viva.. its like a car based white good... just functional tedium.